Grace Garey

This year, Watsi became the first charitable company to raise over $1 million in funding from traditional angel investors in Silicon Valley.

It is also the first Y-Combinator company to nab investor Paul Graham for its board of directors. Watsi allows anyone to give as little as $5 to fund someone's medical care, and 100% of the money is donated. The mission of this startup is so beautiful, you just have to root for its success.

Before joining Watsi, Garey did refugee research in Ghana, worked at a hospital in India, and did humanitarian advocacy in D.C.

Erin Teague

Erin Teague worked as the growth product manager for the mobile-only social network Path for two years and is responsible for the company's astounding user growth in 2013. In the spring, the app was growing by 1 million new users per week. It hit the 10-million-user mark in April. She worked on the product team at Twitter for two years before joining the Path team.

Last fall, she joined Yahoo as a director of product management.

Ramona Pierson

Ramona Pierson has survived worse things than most people can imagine. In 1984, she was hit by a drunk driver and lapsed into a coma that lasted 18 months. After recovering, Pierson eventually launched her first startup, SynapticMash, an education software company that sold to Promethean World for $10 million in 2010.

Now, Pierson is running social learning startup Declara. The aim is to help people sift through tons of content when they're not exactly sure what they're looking for. Last September, Declara raised a $5 million seed round from Founders Fund, Peter Thiel and Data Collective.

Rose Broome

HandUp is proof that the tech industry does care about the homeless. Rose Broome and her co-founder Zac Witte launched their crowdfunding platform for the homeless back in August.

In its pilot stage, there are about 100 homeless people who receive cash donations via text or email. Within the last couple of months, the pair landed a seed investment from Jason Calacanis, Ron Conway, Marc Benioff, and Michael Birch.

Jessica Lessin

Former Wall Street Journal tech reporter and editor Jessica Lessin officially launched her own tech news site in December called The Information. To read all of its articles, you have to shell out $399 a year or $39 a month.

Despite the FDA's cease-and-desist, Wojcicki stands behind the data 23andMe gives its customers. She wrote in November she remains committed to working with the FDA to ensure 23andMe is a trusted consumer product. She also admitted that the company had fallen behind schedule in responding to FDA feedback.

23andMe has raised $188 million to date from investors including Mohr Davidow Ventures, Sergey Brin, Google Ventures and Genentech.

Susan Feldman, Ali Pincus

Co-founder and chief strategy officer; co-founder and chief of merchandising, One Kings Lane

Then, in February 2014, Apple appointed Denise Young Smith to lead its worldwide human resources division. They are in charge of the future of two of Apple's most important assets: its chain of stores and its talent.

(It's also great to see Apple shaking up its previously male-dominated top ranks.)

And, just this month, we got some more huge news about Wojcicki: She was tapped to become head of YouTube. By appointing Wojcicki as the new YouTube CEO, Google could be hinting that it's interested in revamping the video platform's advertising business.